Jackson Browne has deservedly gained a reputation as one of the most eloquent chroniclers of life’s trials and tribulations. It turns out he was always inclined in that direction. After all, the guy wrote an undeniable masterpiece full of mature emotion when he was still a teenager.
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That song, “These Days,” appeared on Browne’s 1973 album For Everyman, and also has been the subject of a few memorable cover versions. At an age when most of us can barely think past the next minute, he was already looking ahead to a time when he’d be fretting about mistakes made and opportunities missed.
“Days” of Yore
By the time Jackson Browne got around to recording “These Days” himself, it had already been memorably covered by two artists who couldn’t have been more stylistically disparate. The German chanteuse Nico did a baroque pop version all the way back in 1967, on which Browne played the sad guitar arpeggios. Gregg Allman did a bluesy take in 1973 that Browne liked so much he essentially borrowed the arrangement when he recorded it.
Browne was coming off a highly regarded debut album when he recorded For Everyman, and he was able to employ the cream of the crop of session players on the record. On “These Days,” drumming legend Jim Keltner lays down the beat, future Toto member David Paich provides the plaintive piano part, and David Lindley, long a key contributor to Browne’s work, adds the moaning slide guitar.
Considering he had written the song almost a decade before he recorded it, you might think the sentiments expressed could have aged poorly. But, as Browne explained in an interview with photographer/director Sam Jones, he was already at that tender age in tune with the inevitable melancholy of life that tends to linger over decades:
“What can you write about when you’re 16? You know, there are deep questions that arrive in a person’s life way before that—whether or not you’re loved, whether or not you’re accepted by your friends, whether you’re good at anything, or can do anything, and whether you’ve made any mistakes.”
The Meaning Behind the Lyrics of “These Days”
Even though Browne completed a version of “These Days” when he was still a teenager, he kept tinkering with the lyrics over the years. (That’s why Nico’s version includes a verse about rambling and gambling that isn’t found in Browne’s own take.) The essential gist is the same, however: that our self-awareness about the right course of action only seems to arrive well after we’ve taken the wrong path.
Browne sums up this conundrum at the end of the verse: These days I seem to think a lot / About the things that I forgot to do / And all the times I had the chance to. Who says you shouldn’t end a sentence on a preposition? By doing so here, Browne hints at the unfulfilled promise that still gnaws at the narrator.
In the second verse, Browne explains his reticence about moving forward in his life. It’s so hard to risk another, he sings about a potential love affair. He suggests his past struggles have resulted in emotional paralysis: Now if I seem to be afraid / To live the life that I have made in song / Well, it’s just that I’ve been losin’ for so long.
The narrator finds a nugget of optimism in the final verse: Things are bound to be improvin’ / These days. But it’s quickly contrasted by his admission that actual progress is often stunted by his inability to leave the past behind: Don’t confront me with my failures / I had not forgotten them.
The lyrics to “These Days” are much more plainspoken we typically imagine when we think of Browne. Perhaps because they were mostly written at that young age. That direct, succinct approach certainly has its advantages, though, as few writers of any age have ever summed up the feeling of regret as well.
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